Nine expeditions were made to the high mountains of Taiwan in a period from 1989 to 1992, and most high mountains exceeding 2, 500 m in height were explored and biologically investigated. Most extensive and intensive surveys were made by parties of entomologists, bringing forth many new findings, among which were found many important data for analyzing the nature and origin of the high altitude fauna. Besides, mammalian surveys yielded a new chiropteran, which has a close relationship to Himalayan forms.The material obtained were studied by both Japanese and Taiwanese members, and 30 papers dealing with the results obtained were already published. Remaining materials are being studied now, and many more papers are expected to be published in 1992 and succeeding years. As a whole, the Taiwanese high altitude fauna consists mainly of those animals that have close relatives in the southern part of Mainland China and the Himalayas, but it is overlaid by those whose closer relatives are, to our present knowledge, found only on the mountains of Japan. The latter relationship is especially apparent in salamanders and ground-living beetles and spiders, but is also found in many other groups of animals. This probably means that various ancestral animals of northern origin invaded Taiwan during the Glacial Period of the Pleistocene, that their descendants survive now in the alpine and subalpine zones of the island, and that newcomers from Mainland China later occupy lower altitudes of those high mountains. Many of the high altitude species of northern origin can be regarded as relicts ; one of the best example of this may be the trechine beetle Masuzonoblemus. whose close relatives are found only in northern Japan and Tianshan.